Sinners Salvation | Various Characters x Reader Oneshots

[?°] #006 KAFKA | ANGST! Hurt/comfort.

You knew; you always have. You may have had the passion and talent, but you long ago lost one, holding tightly to another, and believing you still have both under your control.

You weren't the same talented child that so many adored anymore, but you were still the same child who continued to be a pathological people-pleaser who only wanted the acknowledgment of others.

In the end, fame and attention do matter because they define the very reasons for your identity and the continuation of your undesirable life.

You are fully aware of this fact, yet you cannot seem to stop yourself. A true artist would weave their personal tragedy and fabricate it into a timeless masterpiece. Yet, you have never pondered one important detail.

What becomes of an artist when their brush is meek, their mind lost in the abyss, with no visions to seek? When their passion has already lost its spark to ignite, and sorrow lingers on, untouched and cold?

It was already nighttime; the moon was at its fullest, yet you don't have the will to care anymore, lost in the darkness of your thoughts. You don't indulge in the tiredness, the empty pit in your stomach, or the concentrated primal desire to finally let loose of your entire being. A tempting, melodious voice murmurs in the back of your mind, consuming the entirety of your senses, an offer to travel to the lowest part of the earth, where even the greatest of scientists have yet to discover the fullest extent of it. The watery depth that is known as the abyss, the ocean in which silence can devour you whole. Devoid of a singular worry, devoid of the guilt of being pathetically idiotic in the field where you should have been unsurpassable, devoid of having to live with the fact that you will never be enough no matter the effort you have invested in. Because in the end, puppeteered by fate's hands, those who are blessed by beings of greater power will always succeed over the untalented.

You tilt your head upward, and immediately that nauseating feeling runs its course all over your body. The moonlight emitting through the clear paneglass window mocks you for your misery, taunting you with the art piece that you have embarrassingly spent months on, only to end up with nothing more than a disfigured, incoherent shot of colors. You bite your lip for what seems to be the hundredth time, your swollen eyes streaming enough tears to cover an entire river.

What would everyone think of me? My audience? My mother? My father? You stare up blankly at the ceiling, unable to bear looking at your own creation, a reflection of your inner chaos. What would they all think of me? You wish to never see it again. A heaviness settles in your chest, and you wish to rid yourself of it all, to vanish into nothingness. Your body slumps, silence wrapping around you, thick and suffocating, leaving only shadows of questions echoing in the stillness where time has lost its meaning. What would you think of me—Kafka?

Your grip around your brush loosens, and eventually, your hands relax. You hear the brush drop to the floor alongside the mess of equipment, but its sound registers as nothing more than muffled background noise.

Your eyes surrender to the painful longing to rest, whether involuntarily or voluntarily; you do not know. Slowly, your body begins to yield. You lean back slightly, feeling the world tilting along with you in slow motion like a steady dance with gravity. You're falling, you realize. To say you care would be another lie because you don't. Rather, the eventual fall feels surreal and oddly comforting, like you're drifting into a gentle dream, and the cold floor is like that of a comforting bed that you slump into after a long-awaited day of hard work.

Time stretches, and the world dims, leaving only the sound of your heartbeat pounding in your ears and the arrival of the wooden floor, a final act of surrender as you wait for impact.

If I fall, art will perish with me.

If I don't...

You wait and wait and wait, but the feeling of the harsh wooden floor never comes into contact with your head. Instead, all you could feel were those calloused, ever-so-cautious, indistinguishable hands. You need no vision to identify whose hands those belong to; their touch alone speaks volumes. Those were the hands of a person who has spent a lifetime honing their ability to the utmost, practicing every day with precision and care. The hands of a talented, hardworking genius, someone that you believe you were.